Perfect Mashed Potato

Every kitchen needs one of these.

There really isn't any great secret to good mash, just a few little tricks. And butter. Lots and lots of butter.


First... choose the right potato, you want something like a King Edward or a Desiree. 


Then... peel and boil. 


If you want to be extra fancy you can bake your potatoes whole, on a bed of salt, then when they are cooked scoop out the insides and use that as the base for your mash. 


If you are going to go the more traditional route and boil them I find that the larger you leave them the less water logged they get, but the more careful you have to be to ensure that the outside of each spud doesn't fall apart while leaving the centre raw. And you must salt the water very well. 


Once the spuds are soft to a knife, strain them and then pour them out onto a paper lined baking tray to steam dry for at least 5 minutes. Then, and this is an essential bit of kit for every kitchen, use a ricer to mash them. A ricer is fantastic because it stops the potatoes over working and becoming gluey and starchy. 


Season. Well. And add lots of cubed butter. Half a pack for mash for 4 people is on the mean side... You can add a very small amount of milk, literally a couple of tablespoons, or slightly more of cream. 

The great thing about mash is that is can keep really well if you make a double boiler.

Put your mash into a glass, heat resistant, bowl over the top of a couple of inches of water in the bottom of a pan. Don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water. Cover the bowl with foil and get a very gently steam going in the pan and the mash will be quiet happy for sometime.

The great thing about mash is, not only is it fantastic laden with butter and well seasoned but it can be adapted for different dishes. Adding mustard or horse radish is great with beef and a mash with a herb ribbon running through it is pretty damn fine.

Walk in the park, pint, Sunday lunch.

Today was almost perfect. 


We took the dog and little M for a long walk in the park where they both got pooped out and then, on the way home, walked past our favorite pub and, on the spur of the moment, decided that we both deserved a pub sunday lunch. 


One glass of red wine, one pint, two pork loin lunches later we waddled home, full, happy and with a universal feeling of good will. Some hardcore napping on the sofa followed and sod the budget.


Sunday lunch in the pub is one of those meals that can be totally wonderful, or totally rubbish. It's such an abused meal. The reality is that most people could (or at least should) do it better at home, but it's sometimes really nice to be cooked for and a groaning plate of meat, gravy, roasties and assorted veg, when you haven't had to buy, peel, prep and cook them, can be bliss. 


Now... look... I know that just a few posts ago I had a go at most, if not all, pub food as being less than great. If you haven't realized by now this is not going to be a balanced or measured blog and I reserve the right to often and fundamentally contradict myself. 


However I do stand by the fact that pub food is often pretty poor, and that goes just as much for sunday lunches as any other meal. In fact... probably more so. A busy pub will clear as much as 50% of there food profit over a weekend and most of that is on Sunday but it's an expensive meal to make both in terms of food costs and staffing (all that extra prep, waiting staff... ) so the temptation is to pile the plates high, but often with less than great produce, especially meat, and to turn tables. The more people that you can get through the doors - the more profit you make and that is why you never have to wait long for your Sunday lunch and the veggies can seem a little over cooked. 


Fortunately we are lucky that we have a particularly good selection of food pubs close to where we live. 


But when a pub sunday lunch is good... it's very, very good. 


And, lets be honest, it's about who you are sitting with, more than what you are eating, that makes it perfect. 

V is for Vodka

I do like vodka. Martini with a twist, over ice with lime, in a Sea Breeze, with a splash of lemonade, neat... It's clean, its crisp and I love it. 


For what its worth I like Absolut Blue as a day to day vodka... (that sounds wrong...), Grey Goose for Matini's and for drinking neat and, on one rather memorable dinner party, Camtiz which is sparkling vodka. Might sound rather weird, maybe even not all that nice, but it is really rather lovely.

And as a result I can't remember that much from that dinner party.

Say Cheese

Having to rework last night's dinner at short notice I had to turn to what ever I could find at the bottom of the fridge and cupboards. Fortunately there was a passable cauliflower in the fridge which, when the outer sorry looking green leaves had been stripped away, was still in a pretty good condition.

Last night there was only one thing that could be done with the cauli and that was to combine it with cheese.

Cauliflower Cheese is one of those dishes that can be wonderful, yummy and more-ish or gloopy, bland and, to be frank, fucking horrible.

This is how I do mine:

Take the head of the cauliflower and cut out the central core. Split it into separate florets. Let the face of the cauli talk to you, a little gentle pressure means that it should split into it's natural florets.

Put them in one layer in a thick bottom pan and just cover with cold full fat milk. Add a whole peeled shallot, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, half a dozen whole pepper corns and a good sprinkle of salt.

Bring to the boil and simmer gently until the cauli is soft to the end of a knife.

Remove the cauli florets, keep them warm and discard the shallot, strain the warm milk and set it aside for the cheese sauce.

To make the cheese sauce melt a good chunk of butter then add a tablespoon, maybe less, of plain flour. Cook the flour out and then start to add the milk a slosh at a time. The roux will go lumpy and thick, keep adding the milk a little at a time, whisking, whisking and whisking... it will go smooth. I don't like cheese sauce too thick so I tend to keep the basic white sauce on the thin side.

Now add the cheese. Lots of cheese. A good, strong English cheddar. At least a couple of handfuls. Stir it in until melted, then add a couple of teaspoons of proper English mustard, to taste. But you do want to be able to taste it so don't be shy with it.

Stir. Taste. Season.

Just before pouring over the top of the cauliflower florets stir in one egg yolk.

Put in a medium oven for about 20 minutes.

Now... if your cheese sauce splits because your oven is a bit too hot or you left the cauli cheese in there too long all you have to do is take the florets out of the sauce, let the sauce cool a little and, in the same pan, whisk the sauce by hand. It should come back together again.

Friday night dinner

Tonight's dinner was meant to be steak but for reasons too boring to go into the steak is going to have to sit in the fridge for another evening and something else will be rustled up for dinner tonight. 

My wife, a lapsed vegetarian, is not happy. She was rather looking forward to some meat.  

(Must come back to lapsed veggies another time...)

I think steak and beef cooking in general could be this years 'project.' Not wanting to sound all OCD about the kitchen but over the past couple of years I've become rather obsessed with one ingredient or style of cooking in an attempt to, if not produce the perfect example, certainly produce the very best version that I can. 

The year before last it was roast and mashed potato, last year was roast chicken and slow roast pork belly... this year just might be steak and beef. It's not like I start every year with a 'project.' It's just that i get obsessed with something and end up cooking it more and more to try and get it better and better. It's more that the ingredient picks me... than the other way around.


I love beef (I am English) but all too often it can be totally tasteless and disappointing in texture. Even the best beef can need a lot of help and the lightest of touches to bring it to life. 

Without blowing my own trumpet I now do a pretty damn good roast and mashed potato and give me a half decent chicken and, I like to think, I can cook it in any number of pretty tasty ways. When it comes to the belly pork is such an incredibly complex and wonderful product that I think you could cook for 50 years and still learn new things.  

Over the next couple of days I'll post my way of doing roast & mashed potato and a roast chicken. No doubt everyone will look at my efforts and insights and go... 'well, yeah... of course you do it like that.'

200+

I have had over 200 views... thank you, thank you whoever you are.

Just need to get some followers... !

Brillat-Savarin

In case you are wondering who he was and why he has a quote at the top of this blog, Brillat-Savarin was the first modern food writer. 


And by 'modern' I mean after antiquity and before Jamie Oliver. 


He was French (of course), an amateur and a fantastic eater of food. A gastronomic hero. 


His writing is still very readable, very witty and surprisingly modern in outlook. If you think you love food and love eating you really should read his book. 


It can be bought here: 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Physiology-Taste-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140446141/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1296145772&sr=8-6


It can be downloaded for free as part of Project Gutenberg here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5434


And his Wikipedia entry is here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Anthelme_Brillat-Savarin

Pea & Ham Soup

I'm not in the business of pimping chef's recipes and certainly not the all too often deeply disappointing super-market range that every Tom, Dick and Harry who have ever stood behind a range love to churn out.


However... I've made a version of this and its extremely good and, of course, you actually have to make it rather than pour it out of a carton.


http://www.waitrose.com/recipe/Heston's_Pea_and_ham_soup.aspx


Let's be honest. Heston Blumenthal is one of the best chef's and nicest blokes in a kitchen today. And he makes great stuff. If you want to try the original recipe, the one that I can vouch for, which calls for making a ham hock stock then it can be found here.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article2063855.ece


Give it a go. It is very good and makes the entire house spell of simmering Pork which can only ever be a good thing. 

M&S Shame

Two pints later and I've stumbled through the Oxford St M&S and grabbed assorted ready meals, wines and pre-packed puds. I know... Hypocrite.

Pub

Sitting waiting for a meeting in a pub in central London... Normally a horrible prospect, but they have Adnams on tap, a rarity outside of Suffolk. And they do a pork shoulder and black pudding sausage which I rather like the sound of. Although it's served with mash & gravy (fair enough) and onion rings?! Rather a Bernys Steak Hoyse throw back isn't it? Bet the mash & gravy aren't great. Pub mash is rarely anything other than packet mix or water logged and the gravy will be granules or, at best, a onion and stock mix thickened to gloop by granules.

So... Good beer, interesting sounding sausage, predictably awful sides.

I haven't eaten it... And might be very wrong... But the standard of cooking in a lot of British pubs leaves way too much to be desired. No detail... No fucking care or pride.

From the Hungry IPhone

Addiction

I think I'm developing a lime pickle addiction. I've always liked it on left over cold roast chicken and, of course with curry, but this evening I had it on a lump of strong cheddar. And it was lovely. I feel better for having shared.

Sometimes not even cooking helps...

So much for updating this everyday with a record of everything that I eat and cook. 


I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. 


All rather out of sorts... not really interested in cooking or eating. Maybe this funk will pass... but one thing is for sure, my wife is cooking tonight.


I dislike January, I dislike not having a job and I dislike the state of our food cupboards. All I want are Mars Bars, that have been allowed to go cold and hard in the fridge. Probably because when I was a kid they where the ultimate treat, something to be savoured and treasured, partly because they where a rarity, but also I remember them being huge, almost too big to be able to finish in one sitting. 


Now, of course, I can polish the things off in three or four bites, but when I was a kid there was something slightly intimidating about a cold, hard, Mars bar. 

Take Away Love

After a truly rubbish day I'm taking solace in a couple of tins of San Miguel, embarrassingly bad music that I used to love as a kid (care of Spotify) while contemplating a cheeky mid week take away. 


Probably a curry... 


Why is it that take away curry is almost always better in anticipation than when is sits there, a mass of mush on your plate? 


Maybe I'm ordering from the wrong take out place? 


Maybe my wife is right and I just order too much?


Maybe I don't really want a curry.


Last nights dinner, by the way, was sausage and mash with a good gravy. A simple, almost cliched meal, helped into the levels of the spectacular thanks to some very good ingredients.


Proper organic Cumberlands, a butter laden mash with handfuls of herbs running through it and a gravy made from browned onions, mushrooms and thyme, deglazed with wine and then a good wet beef stock reduced down and down and down. 


Finished off with a squeeze of lemon, butter and seasoning (including a pinch of sugar...) It was thick and rich and wonderful and pretty luxurious but it was a mid week dinner party so seemed worth it. 


Now I want mashed potato again. 


And a vodka martini... actually, just the martini. 

Is there anything better...

... than well seasoned mashed potato with loads of butter?

I don't think so... but if you do, leave a comment.

Stella Stelle

Monday night cooking is all about getting something hot and tasty as quickly as possible, usually accompanied by a large glass of wine, to help cushion the shock of the start of another week.

Last night the combination of pork and pasta was needed, especially after the day I’d had.  

Thin, chipolatas fried and then run through the oven to make them sticky.

Set to one side and then slices of onion, a fat chilli thinly sliced, a wonderful Portobello mushroom in chunks all softened in the same pan, then the sausages returned.

Half a tin of quality tinned tomatoes, slug of red wine, chicken stock and then a hand full of Stelle Pasta.

Stelle is the little star shaped soup pasta which when cooked down brings to together a wet sauce into something approaching a risotto, but with all the body of pasta.

I don’t use it that often, but I do love the stuff.

The result… a real stick to the gills dinner of spicy, savoury, pork-y-ness.

Mind the Gap

We all trooped down to the Farmers Market yesterday; me, my wife, our little baby and bloody hell was it cold. The wind was cutting and we all froze, except for little M who was wrapped up in enough layers of insulation to survive a nuclear winter.

She, of course, managed to sleep through the entire sorry trip.

Despite bracing the North London elements we where greeted with virtually nothing for sale in what is usually a very impressive market. One of the veg stallholders had put up a large sign blaming the early arrival of the Hungry Gap that, if it was true, would make it very early indeed.

The Hungry Gap is the month or so between the end of the winter brassicas and the start of the early spring crops like broad beans, it falls around March time and usually means that there is little of nothing at the market except for some sorry looking potatoes, rather tired root veg and Kale.

Lots of Kale.

Now I like Kale, in fact I like Kale a lot, but sometimes it needs a little kick to lift it and that is exactly what I did when I served it with a couple of thick, fatty and juicy pork chops last night.

The result?

A wonderfully, messy, yummy, spiky mix which acts as both vegetable and sauce and goes perfectly with the fatty pork.

Fry off some peeled apple segments in butter, just enough to give them a little colour. Throw in some garlic.

Add a splash of brandy. If you want to be a kitchen show off, you can flame it. Always impressive and always makes you feel sadly chef-y.

Add the washed Kale, having removed the tough central stalks.

Season.

Add a splash of water to let it all steam, or chicken stock if you have any.

Clamp on the lid and let it steam until the Kale is tender.

Before serving… stir in a spoonful of mustard (your choice…English, Dijon, Whole grain doesn’t really matter) and another knob of butter.

Recheck for seasoning.

The apples should have fallen apart and made a rather lovely, potent, mustardy sauce with the irony Kale… perfect for fatty pork.

Oh God... not another food blog

Aren’t there more than enough already?

Do we really need or care about the restaurant reviews of a frustrated accountant from Tuscon or the recipe insights of a retired teacher from Colchester?

The answer is almost definitely, ‘no we do not.’

There are plenty of very talented professionals out there writing about, and creating, great food day in, day out with the only requirement placed upon us amateurs being simply to just sit back, read their work and stuff our faces.  

The Internet is awash with a great many people, saying very little at the top of their voices.

So why am I doing it?

Because I want to.


Is there a blog equivalent of 'do as I say, not as I do?'

One more thing... while everyone is welcome, with all views and comments, I just want to make one thing very clear. I am not and have no interest in the term FOODIES.

I really don’t get on with that nerdish breed of food obsessive’s who collect menus form top restaurants and play one up man ship on the rarity and exclusivity of their olive oil.

You have come to the wrong place to boast about the age of your Balsamic vinegar.

I will say it loud and say it proud, this is NOT a foodie blog.

So what is Confessions of a Hungry Mind about?

Exactly what it says… a year of eating, cooking and digesting.

More than that… who knows? 


Leave a comment..! 

Retro

The three post below come from articles I wrote for the excellent Retro Magazine. 


Check it out... it's very good indeed. 


http://www.theretrocollective.com/


I should be doing some more food writing for them shortly, so got any food memories, retro classics or dishes that time forgot that you'd like to be seen given a modern twist? 
Just leave a comment. 


A couple of people have also asked if there was any recipes to go with the articles. The answer? 
Yes. Yes there was. And here they are. If you try them out, let me know how they tasted.


Angel Delight

Angel Delight is basically a fruit fool, one of the simplest and tastiest desserts there is. 

You can substitute any soft fruit; black berries, raspberries, banana and get a fantastic result although you might want to slightly alter the amount of sugar for less tart fruits.

For 2 good portions.

250g strawberries

50g icing sugar

A lemon

250ml double cream

A large spoonful of full fat Greek yogurt.

Take your strawberries and remove any green leaves, cut in half and if they are particularly large cut out the tough hull.

Blitz them in a food processor with 2/3 of the sugar.

Taste and if its too tart add a little more sugar. 

If it’s too sweet add a squeeze of lemon. 

Keep tasting until you are happy but remember this is a chilled dessert and chilling dulls flavour so you want your fool to be as punchy as possible.

In a separate bowl whip the cream until it reaches a firm consistency, but don’t over work it. Fold in the yogurt, which will help stabilise the mixture and then fold in the strawberries. 

If you want to be extra fancy, pass the strawberry pulp through a sieve first to get rid of any little pips or hard pulp.

Place in suitable glasses and put in the fridge for about an hour.

If you want to be particularly classy garnish with squirty cream and a glace cherry. 

Coq Au Vin   

You will need:

A large jointed chicken

Half a dozen rashers of un-smoked streaky bacon 


2 onions 


A large carrot 


A stick of celery

2 or 3 cloves of garlic 


Sprinkling of flour 


Slosh of brandy 


Chicken stock

A bottle of red wine 


A few sprigs of thyme 


A couple of bay leaves 


Butter 


Plain flour

Large handful of small brown mushrooms not white buttons.

Cut the bacon into strips and fry off with a little butter in the bottom of a large casserole until they are golden brown but not burnt. 

Remove and put to one side.

Season the chicken with salt & pepper and place skin side down in the casserole. 

You want to develop a golden colour to the skin. This is where your deep flavour will come from. Once the skin looks beautifully browned turn the chicken over and briefly colour the flesh side. 

Take the chicken out.

Put your chopped onions, carrots and celery in to the pan. 

If you want you can dice all the veg relatively small to give the dish a more refined look or leave them chunkier to make the whole thing more peasantry. But don’t cut them straight through, cut small or on an angle to increase the surface area.

Just before returning the bacon and chicken to the pan add your chopped garlic. 

Add you thyme and bay.

Cover with your red wine. 

You have to be prepared to give up a whole bottle of decent French red and if you want to be bang on the money it should be Beaujolais. 

Put shit wine in… you’ll get a shit flavor out.

If there isn’t enough wine in one bottle to just cover what’s in the pan make up the rest with chicken stock. If you can’t be bothered to make chicken stock try and get the fresh wet stocks that most supermarkets carry. Don’t use a stock cube, everything will get too salty and kill the flavor of the chicken. 

Better to use water than a stock cube.

Bring to a gentle boil, cover and reduce to a simmer.

Fry your mushrooms in a little butter in a separate pan until golden brown. 

At the last minute deglaze the pan with a slosh of brandy, flambéing it to get all the extra flavour into the mushrooms. Always make sure someone is around to see you do this… it looks impressive and everyone will think you must be a serious chef even if it does cost you your eyebrows form time to time. 

Set to one side.

You are looking at about 1 hour for the dish to be cooked. The chicken should be soft but not falling off the bone. Once you are happy that its cooked take the chicken pieces out and add the fried mushrooms while kicking up the heat to reduce the sauce.

Make a beurre manie by taking some butter and forming a paste with you flour. It should look like a white gob stopper. The more flour you use the more your sauce will thicken. Better to add crumbs of the beurre manie gradually because you can’t take it away once it’s in the pan.

Drop the beurre manie into the sauce and stir on the boil until the sauce looks thick and glistening. 

Taste and adjust the seasoning if it needs a little pepper or salt. 

Return the chicken to the pan and serve. 

Prawn Cocktail

For the perfect Modern 1970’s Prawn Cocktail you will need

Raw king prawns on the shell. 3 per person depending on size.

2 tbsp Helman’s Mayonnaise

2 tbsp Crème Fresh

1 tbsp Heinz Tomato Ketchup.

A dash of Tabasco.

1 Baby gem lettuce per person.

Olive oil.

Lemon.

Fresh chives.

To cook the prawns:

Boil a pan of water, reduce to a simmer and place the prawns ‘shell on’ into the water to poach. Depending on the size this can several minutes. While still warm peel the prawn but leave the heads on. (If you are a serious prawn lover the meat gained from crushing the heads in your mouth is not to be missed.) 

Dress the prawns in a very small drizzle of olive oil. 

Season with salt and pepper.

To make the sauce:

Mix the Mayonnaise, with the Crème Fresh and the Ketchup. The Crème Fresh helps to keep the sauce lighter and less claggy. Add Tabasco to taste, a squeeze of lemon salt and pepper. Marie Rose sauce is so intensely personal that there is no other option than to taste as you go along and balance the sauce in the way you like. 

Mix together and put to one side.

To prepare the lettuce:

Shred as finely as possible, preferably into long thin strips. Just before assembly dress in a very little olive oil and add some finely chopped Chives. Do not add salt as this will draw water out of the lettuce.

To assemble:

Place the dressed lettuce in the bottom of a glass, pile the prawns on top and spoon some of the sauce over the prawns. But don’t flood the glass with the sauce – let the prawns be the stars. Sprinkle a small amount of chopped chives on top, twist of pepper and serve immediately. 

Where Angel Delight Fears to Tread Fruit Fools Rush In

Only once has a dish been served to me in a restaurant that moved me to tears.

Even for a relatively well-adjusted and emotionally balanced chap I find this fact slightly embarrassing to admit, but there were extenuating circumstances.

It was the last day of my 30s, the milometer of my life was hours away from ticking over to hit 40, I was sitting in Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, one of the best restaurants in the world and, more importantly, I was sitting opposite a beautiful woman who a few months later was due to become my wife.

And she was also picking up the bill.

So… if ever I was allowed a tearful moment surely that was it. But these tears came out of nowhere, welling up from a deep part of my mind as my taste buds and brain connected, resulting in a jolt of food memory that left me blubbing like a little girl.

And the cause? A relatively simply desert of banana puree, with a little mango on a biscuit base and a soft set cream, a single course from part of the multi course tasting menu. What this sublime piece of cooking had done was, in an instant, catapult me back to being 5 years old, sitting next to my mother who had just given me a plate of mashed banana with top of the milk and a sprinkling of sugar. And, as any Freudian will tell you, there is nothing more likely to get a fella to shed a tear than childhood memories of his mother.

What has this got to do with Angel Delight?

Well, apart from mashed banana and top of the milk the only other desert that resonates so strongly from my childhood is Angel Delight and if a mere, all be it Michelin starred, recreation of one desert could have such an effect I was fascinated, if slightly alarmed, to find out what a taste of a long forgotten childhood delight might do. So I set out to retaste Angel Delight while fully expecting the possibility of a full-on mental breakdown.

Having tracked down three flavours; Butterscotch, Chocolate and Strawberry I was more than a little surprised how easy each were to make. 300ml’s of milk, quick whisk and then leave for 5 minutes. I remembered much more complexity from my childhood although that could have been down to the elaborate addition of some squirty tinned cream and a glace cherry. 

Classy… our house. 

Having whisked and waited the moment of truth came and, armed with a large box of Kleenex, the tasting began.

First up Butterscotch.

And… oh… it was horrible. Maybe I’d got the ‘complex’ cooking instructions wrong but it was rubbery and tasted faintly of furniture polish.

Next up chocolate; a better texture but none of the deep coco flavour that you would expect or want and a disturbing visual double for something our dog is known to produce.

Finally, and always my childhood favourite, Strawberry.

Despite the violent pink colour, this looked good, this looked like I remembered from my 70’s childhood. Long forgotten images and scents were beginning to surface; the smell of a space hopper on a hot summer day, the feeling of my Action Man’s ‘life like’ crew cut under my fingers, watching Ipswich Town winning the FA Cup (the one and only time I’ve ever shown any interest in football) and then I tasted the pink goo and, drum roll please, it tasted almost exactly like Strawberry doesn’t.

What a disappointment, what a let down, part of my childhood had died a little with the tasting of those convenience desserts and that would be enough to bring a tear to anyone’s eye. 


First printed in the excellent http://www.theretrocollective.com/

In Search of Coq

When it comes to retro, you can’t get much more retro than the combination of red wine, bacon, mushrooms and an old farmhouse chicken.

Legend has it that Coq Au Vin was invented for Julius Caesar as he made his conquering way through Gaul and certainly it’s a great dish to fortify you against the soggy French countryside while you merrily go around subjugating, murdering and generally being a right royal Italian pain in the arse.

One suspects if Coq Au Vin was truly a dish created for a conquering Caesar whoever the down trodden French chef who first prepared it probably added a little of is own ‘special sauce’ by way of biting political satire.  Never annoy the chef and/or burn down his village – you will get spit (or worse) in your dinner.

So fast-forward a couple of thousand years; the Roman Empire has fallen, one suspects that the French are still pissing in our soup and Julius Caeser and Kenneth Williams have become the same person.

But Coq Au Vin is still one of the best dishes in the world… if you can get a good Coq.

It might have fallen out a favour a little, but right through the 60’s and 70’s it was a staple of a thousand local French Bistros and suburban dinner parties where it was often served with, God forbid, rice and some awful German wine.

The dish had a whiff of the continent about it, an air of sophistication, it went perfectly with Serge Gainsbourg’s pornographic muttering emanating form the stereo and made us all feel that little bit more glamorous and French. 

Even if we came from Colchester, which, as anyone who has ever been there will testify, is about as far form any sense of glamour as you can get.

And, of course, it was always made with a pale English chicken rather than a robust French Coq.

The whole point of a long slow, braising dish with fat in the form of bacon and a healthy slosh of alcohol is to coax some tenderness into an other wise tough and unyielding bird. Use a young chicken and you can end up with a cloying, gluey mess with an unsatisfactorily tasteless sauce and none of the big, robust flavours that you would expect.

So the challenge becomes to hunt yourself down a Coq.

I searched high and low in some of the best butchers in London and while most said that they could order me a bird, imported at great expense from France (somewhat making a mockery of what is meant to be a hearty peasant dish) none had a Coq in stock.

In the end I settled for the gamest, toughest looking chicken that I could find. There is NO point in making this dish with a cheap supermarket chicken. (In fact if you ever use cheap super market chickens for anything why are you even bothering to read this blog? You clearly know nothing and care less about food so I suggest you fuck off back to stuffing frozen reformed meat products down your neck and leave the food and eating to real men.)

Once you’ve got yourself a game old bird then the recipe is simplicity itself, joint the chicken (something that your butcher should be more than happy to do for you) and then it is just a matter of getting everything on the hob before cracking open your best bottle of red, putting some Serge on the CD player, sitting back and thinking suitable Gaelic thoughts. 


First printed in the excellent http://www.theretrocollective.com/

Prawn Star

It’s difficult to think of anything ‘good’ that came out of the 1970’s.

It’s the bastard decade that the rest of the century is embarrassed by. The inbred cousin who at family gatherings gets over excited and starts dribbling only to be ignored in the hope that he will just do the decent thing and die quietly in the corner. 

It was the decade that gave us Peters & Lee, terrorism at the Olympics, suburban wife swapping and Thatcher. Thanks a bunch 1970’s.

The food wasn’t a whole lot better.

In our house, Vesta Curry or a Fray Bentos pie from a tin followed with, if we were lucky, a fluorescent Angel Delight that tasted like shampoo and bubble gum was considered the cornerstone of a balanced and faintly exotic meal.

The only and very occasional jewel that lit up the ’70’s table was the appearance on high days and holidays of a deep pink mound of freshly defrosted prawns, covered in a wonderfully cloying sauce all piled on wilting lettuce and served in a Martini glass with a slice of lemon jauntily wedged on its rim.

The Prawn Cocktail drenched in Marie Rose sauce, possibly the best, and maybe the only, decent thing to come out of the 1970’s kitchen.

So why has the Prawn Cocktail fallen form grace? Why isn’t it celebrated and enjoyed in the very best restaurants, why can it only be found on the menu at Harvesters (£3.49 with a Thousand Island Dressing - - wrong) or at painfully ironic dinner parties held in Shoreditch?

It’s all because of the sauce.

The very thing that makes a prawn cocktail great, the thick almost cackling Marie Rose sauce that catches at the back of throat, is also what makes the dish deeply unfashionable, hated by chefs and completely and sublimely wonderful.

Back in the ‘70’s the quality of prawns left an awful lot to be desired.

Fresh un-cooked prawns, on ice, in their shells? Forget it.

What prawns we had were deep frozen, badly transported, little pink bullets which when defrosted had the strange texture of rubbery cardboard and the lingering taste of the inside of a cat’s mouth.

But despite these major drawbacks in both taste and texture we couldn’t get enough of them.

Prawns screamed glamour, they screamed expensive, they screamed that ‘yes, we have a new Ford Granda, Melamine kitchen and wall to wall shag.’ A prawn cocktail was a social indicator that you where going somewhere, that you had money and therefore good taste.

But, of course, you didn’t have ‘good taste’ because as with most things that people buy to impress others with, the only impressive thing about 1970’s frozen North Atlantic prawn was it’s price.

So the 1970’s host had a dilemma. How to show off your taste in expensive ingredients without actually making your guests retch?

What was needed to make the dish eatable, enjoyable even, was a strong flavoured sauce, so strong in fact that the main ingredient could be hidden, masked, used purely as a delivery system for the sauce.  

What was needed was a sauce that could stage a culinary coup and usurp the main ingredient entirely, taking over and becoming the reason for the dish to exist in the first place.

And that is what a Marie Rose sauce was born to do – it’s the ultimate culinary bullyboy.

No one in their right mind would take a flavour as delicate, light and precise as a fresh prawn and smother it in a combination of ketchup, mayonnaise and Tabasco but, in a trick as old as cooking itself, it you are faced with sub standard produce that is exactly what you do… smoother it in a heavy sauce.

Thankfully things have changed.

Some of the countries best chefs have, while not embracing the prawn cocktail, have allowed its upper class cousin the Seaford Cocktail to creep back onto their menus. Richard Corrigan’s Bentleys does a very fine, very dignified Seafood Cocktail that is light, luxurious and full of ozone tasting morsels.

However, most restaurants serving prawns, or any sea food, with anything other than the lightest of sauces, a little chilli or maybe a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil would be burned to the ground by a rampaging mob of Sunday supplement reading food snobs.   

And that’s a shame.

Because when it’s done with skill and attention there is a place for the 1970’s inspired Prawn Cocktail. A place which isn’t to do with the ironic, the kitsch or the camp but because it tastes really good and, with a few small alterations and changes, can work well with good quality, meaty, fresh king prawns.

Oh… and Prawn Cocktail is never acceptable as a sandwich filling.


First printed in the excellent http://www.theretrocollective.com/